In an article from the Jan/Feb 2011 edition of Women's Health, writer Camille Noe Pagán gives some advice on how to go around and alter some diet rules in order to "battle the bulge without missing a beat of your life."
Lose Weight, Not Friends
According to Women's Health, cutting back on calories causes levels of serotonin (a feel-good chemical in the brain) to take a nose dive, causing you to be cranky and not fun to be around. In order to keep these levels normal, they suggest to figure out the number of calories that your body requires and then to eat balances meals where you are getting calories from protein, whole grains, and produce. Additionally, consuming omega-3s can help fight depression and keep you full longer by slowing digestion.
Lose Weight, Not Money
Research from the University of Washington has found that the price of healthy, nutrient-dense foods have gone up about 30% in the last 4 years, while candy and soda has only gone up 15%. Women's Health suggests that one money-saving tactic could be to buy less meat. Meat tends to be the most expensive items purchased in grocery stores and most Americans eat too much of it anyway. Instead, Women's Health suggests to fill the void with fiber-rich foods like beans, oatmeal, and brown rice as well as with vegetables like mushrooms and eggplant.
Lose Weight, Not Time
In a recent study, 40% of women cited having not enough time as the main reason they didn't eat better. Women's Health tells us that using just an hour or two over your weekend to shop for the ingredients you will need for healthy foods over the week as well as for food prep; like cutting up vegetables and making marinades, will save you both time and pounds. A CDC survey showed that almost 40% of people who lost weight and kept it off planned their meals ahead of time and did the prep work to get them started, thus eliminating impulse junk intake.
Lose Weight, Not Muscle
As Women's Health puts it, "If you drop weight without lifting any, you risk shedding muscle tissue instead of fat." Muscle tissue takes 2x more calories to sustain than fat tissue and it helps to keep your metabolism running at full speed. Women's Health suggests eating lots of protein and doing at least 20 to 30 minutes of strength training two or three times a week. They say to eat at least three or four servings of protein-rich foods; like beans, soy, fish, lean meat, poultry, or low-fat dairy daily.
Lose Weight, Not Your Lifestyle
Often, dieters will try to make extreme lifestyle changes in order to lose their weight. However, these extremities can set people up for failure. Women's Health suggests skipping extreme regimens in favor of small changes. In a study where overweight subjects were asked to make small lifestyle changes; such as eating breakfast, having as many vegetables at each meal as they like, only watching TV for the same amount of time that they worked out that day; the subjects were able to lose eight pounds in two weeks. It is important to make small goals and changes in order to give you small successes and keep you on track with your diet goals.
Exercise: Today is a freestyle based swim workout. I only had time for a mile… so here's what to do.
200 warm up
100 freestyle swim
100 freestyle pull
100 freestyle kick
100 freestyle swim
200 freestyle swim
200 freestyle pull
200 freestyle kick
200 freestyle swim
200 cool down
TOTAL: 1600 meters
Eat: If you are going to buy your produce organic, there are a few vegetables that aren't necessary to actually get organic. The following are the top five vegetables and the top five fruits that are the least likely to contain trace levels of pesticides and can be purchased conventionally without worries, according to Cooking Light: broccoli, onion, asparagus, cabbage, eggplant, avocado, bananas, kiwi, pineapple, mango.
Relax: When I got home from work today, I sat down and watched the season finale of one of my favorite TV shows… Pretty Little Liars. It was an awesome show! Only bad part was that my sister couldn't watch it with me.
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